Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You

Anything you say can and will be used against you, I warn home sellers in Sacramento. Sacramento home sellers have rights and don’t have to say anything to a third party. On top of that, no matter what a buyer’s agent may believe, it is not the seller’s responsibility to convey transaction status or to discuss anything about the terms of selling the home with another agent. That’s one of the reasons sellers hire a Sacramento real estate agent, to represent the seller. Yet, agents seem to continue all the time to ask sellers this stuff.

When a listing notes in the showing instructions to make an appointment with the owner, it means an agent can call a seller to make an appointment. It doesn’t mean an agent is free to engage in a conversation about how many offers the seller has received, whether any of the offers were cash, or if the seller will accept less than list price — yet, you’d be amazed at how many agents do exactly that. No wonder some agents don’t let anybody talk to their sellers. Because anything you say can and will be used against you.

Regardless of how a listing agent might try to micromanage a transaction, though, one can’t always separate a buyer’s agent from a seller. It’s simply impossible. The buyer’s agent might run across the seller pulling out of the driveway as the agent is pulling up to the front of the home, and it is fairly easy for the buyer’s agent to slam her vehicle into park, leap out, run up to the seller’s car and knock on the window.

I practice sometimes with my clients to repeat after me: “you’ll have to ask my agent,” as a response to questions thrown by outsiders in their direction. I don’t care if it’s something simple as how long have you lived here, the preferred response is: you’ll have to ask my agent. You might think a transaction is all about win-win but it’s really about a listing agent trying to do what is best for her seller and a buyer’s agent trying to do what is best for the buyer.

Any information a home seller provides can and will be used against the seller. You’re not just two people standing next to each other in a grocery store line having a chat about some reality TV show on the cover of People. You’re probably a seller who doesn’t want to drop bags of cash out of the window. Trust your agent and go be BFF?after the transaction closes.